Android App Video Review: Soldiers of Glory: WW2

Soldiers of Glory: WW2 is a new tower defense game from Cat Studio, who also brought us Galaxy Wars Tower Defense and Neon Defense. It takes on a much more gritty and realistic aesthetic than its predecessors, and all in all, it’s a solid tower defense game. It’s got nice visuals and sound and tried and true gameplay mechanics, but it’s also cripplingly difficult and is currently full of bugs and issues.

You start out with one single level available to you, though you can play any of the three game modes for any level once it’s unlocked, being Normal, Endless, and Single Life. You can also choose between Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulty for each game. You place and upgrade towers around the environment to create mazes and other classic TD structures. These maps aren’t completely wide open like some other TD games, but they do have plenty of environmental objects to build around. Because of this, each level requires a very different strategy. You also have carpet bombs and other power attacks to use in a pinch, though they have rather long cool down timers, so use them carefully.

This is a solid game, but it’s also ridiculously challenging. As you earn points, you’ll earn money, which can be used to upgrade units and powers in different ways. Before you can really upgrade your units very much though, you’ll probably have a very hard time. You can always purchase extra money in-app for a big boost. It technically isn’t required, and you can just grind out the same levels over and over, but that’s no fun and they’re clearly trying to get you to consider IAP. The game is also very buggy. I have occasional issues starting it up, it froze on me once, and every so often the game will glitch and not send you any new waves of troops, forcing you to exit and start a new game.

The art and sound effects are all great, and this game really can be quite fun. It definitely gets better once you start upgrading your units, but that initial difficulty wall will be a major turn off to some. Outside of the campaign, you can play any level freely through the Custom Battle mode, which is a nice plus. This game is on the pricier side compared to most other tower defense games, available for four dollars at the time of this review. Definitely check out the free demo version before you buy the real deal, though.